Tag Archives: Benedict Cumberbatch

Capsules, Shorts

CAPSULE: “THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR” (AND THREE OTHER WES ANDERSON ROALD DAHL ADAPTATIONS)

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FEATURING: , , , , , Rupert Friend

PLOT: “Henry Sugar” describes a man who learns how to see while blindfolded, and uses that skill in blackjack; the other three short adaptations involve a boyhood kidnapping, a poisonous snake, and a rat catcher.

Still from The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023)

COMMENTS: In 2021, Netflix bought the rights to the complete works of British children’s author . The jewel of this legacy, from Netflix’s perspective, is “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” from which they have produced a very horrible indeed Willy Wonka prequel film starring a discombobulated Timothée Chalamet. The acquisition left them with a number of smaller properties to exploit, however, including dozens of short stories. Up to the plate steps Dahl stan Wes Anderson (who adapted The Fantastic Mr. Fox as a feature film in 2009) to tackle four lesser-known tales.

The longest and most important of the miniseries is the 37-minute “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” which Anderson and Netflix chose to premiere at the Venice International Film Festival. It is a relatively simple but exotic fantasy about a man who studies an ancient yogic text to learn the art of X-ray vision so that he can cheat at blackjack, but ends up bored, wondering “what’s next?”. The plot and moral are slightly flimsy, but Dahl’s craft is in the telling rather than the destination. Anderson honors the author’s talents by keeping almost all of Dahl’s prose intact, with exposition and asides related by the actors speaking directly to the camera: first Fiennes, as Dahl himself; then Cumberbatch as Henry Sugar, describing his own thought processes beside his dialogue; then Patel, narrating a flashback; then Kingsley, narrating a flashback within the flashback. Diving even further into artificiality, Anders eschews the magic afforded by film for humbler forms of stagecraft. Backdrops are hoisted into the flyspace to reveal new settings; stagehands visibly hand the actors props; makeup artists walk on set to swap wigs and glue on facial hair; a bookshelf, wall and door slide in from different directions to instantaneously create a new set. The effect might be termed “whimsically Brechtian.” There is no ironic bite to Anderson’s procedure here; in conjunction with the preservation of the original prose, which casts the actors as slavishly at the beck and call of Dahl’s written instructions, these visible dressings serve as a reminder of the function of imagination in constructing a story as it’s related. It’s as if we’re watching from the perspective of Wes Anderson’s mind’s eye as he listens to the stories. With their emphasis on baroquely detailed settings and de-emphasis on emoting, Anderson’s works often feel narrated anyway, rather than enacted—like pop-up picture books read by a parent to a child at bedtime. This series follows up on Asteroid City‘s cognizance of the process of its own creation, likely taking the theme as far as it can formally go.

If you hunger for more after “Sugar”—and chances are you will, for these bon-bons are simple to digest and have a wide-ranging appeal—three shorter (a uniform 17 minutes each) stories follow, each in the same style, each with a few new surprises to offer. “The Swan” is a surprisingly gruesome tale of childhood bullying; “Poison” tells of a man lying deathly still in bed, afraid to move because of a deadly snake napping on his abdomen; and “The Rat Catcher” affords a nice grimy role for Fiennes and a chance for Anderson to indulge in a few seconds of stop-motion animation. The six featured actors appear throughout the four films in various combinations, often in multiple roles within the same short. All are charming, recommended, and delivered with perfect efficiently.

If you add the runtimes of the four shorts together, you get 100 minutes of celluloid, which is essentially a second 2023 feature for Anderson. It’s turned out to be a zenith year for the auteur (who also endured a series of viral memes early in the season). Having, I presumed, here reached the limits of what he can do with self-aware theatricality, it will be fascinating to see what challenge Anderson takes on next.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Neither twee nor saccharine, Anderson’s aesthetic tends to mirror the auras and oddball personalities of his films. In a work suffused with stupefying mysteries, the strange visions Henry Sugar teems with echo its drifters’ wide-eyed wonder as well as their creator’s. It’s an infectious feeling.”–Leonardo Goi, The Film Stage (festival screening)

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

DOCTOR STRANGE (2016)

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Created by Steve Ditko, Doctor Strange was an authentically odd character in the Marvel universe of the 1960s. Aptly, he debuted in the “Strange Tales” comic. The character almost perfectly encapsulated Ditko’s idiosyncratic, surreal pencil work, even more so than his better known co-creation, Spiderman. Complementing Ditko’s art, Stan Lee scripted the character as a hybrid mixture of Jungian archetypes with a theosophist cocktail of Eastern mysticism and Egyptian mythology. When other artists took over Doctor Strange after Ditko’s departure, it never had quite the same texture, and quickly became bland before descending into parody as the good doctor could be found in superhero team-ups with the likes of Hulk and Spiderman (!)

A pulp mystic, the character hardly seemed like a viable nominee for big screen treatment, and when Doctor Strange (2016) was announced as the next Marvel movie, the prospects didn’t look hopeful, considering director Scott Derrickson’s execrable resume.  Surprisingly,  Derrickson and his co-writers went straight to Ditko and Lee’s original source material, delivering an entertainingly psychedelic production, which is helped by actor Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role, , the ever reliable , and .

Still from Doctor Strange (2016)As much as embodies Iron Man, Cumberbatch does the same for this surgeon with the Trump-sized ego. However, an accident leaves Doc’s precious surgical hands mutilated, prompting him to seek enlightenment via the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton, filling in for ), Mordo () and Wong (Benedict Wong). Before you can say Expecto Patronum, Strange sees the light and transforms into Chandu the Magician heading to the next Hare Krishna meeting. Despite the here-we-go-again St. Paul conversion myth, it plays out much more uniquely, viscerally, and tongue-in-cheek than one might expect.  As Strange perfects his new metaphysical trade, the CGI actually enhances the narrative, as opposed to distracting us from it—and, yes, see it in 3D, because that’s the best route for trippy 60s symbolism. Derrickson and company faithfully recreate and expand upon Ditko’s peculiar brand of surrealism and the havoc they wreak with illusionary imagery from the mirror universe is refreshingly off-kilter.

In a rarity for something churned out by Marvel, the director and team have been given room to play outside of conveyor-belt dictates. The fun they have is contagious, but such a subject can only be as good as its villain. Fortunately, they have one in the outlaw mystic Kaecilius (Mikkelsen) who engages in a phantasmagoric battle with Strange on the streets of New York (aided considerably by Michael Giacchino’s galvanizing score). Mikkelsen’s Kaecilius could very well be his astral, Dark Dimension, bony version of Hannibal Lecter (and shame on those who missed that late series, which rendered the /Jonathan Demme version obsolete), delivering his hocus-pocus dialogue with such aridity, he scares the hell out of you just by speaking. Mikkelsen is cast well (although underused) against Cumberbatch’s in-the-know remote wit. Likewise, McAdams is smartly cast as Strange’s ex-girlfriend who literally assists in his physical and metaphysical healing. The actors, coupled with visuals blatantly inspired by MC Escher, give Doctor Strange an all too uncommon individuality. This is not the Avengers taking turns pounding away at big shiny black, metallic thingamajigs. Rather, the good doctor, with his cloak of levitation, takes his battles to the realm of pop nightmares, which makes the late hint to an inevitable Avengers tie-in all the more disappointing. Is it weird? Nah, but it’s an empyrean burlesque and, for this studio, that is a surprising treat.